Author: Kim Graves

I have worked for some of the most known corporate businesses. This is an excerpt of some of my experiences.

My first experience working for a major corporation was while I was in high school. It was the one of the most common jobs a teens could have…with fast food. McDonald’s gave me a background in cashiering and my first experiences with customer service.

AT&T Universal Card Services was what I considered my first real corporate job. I worked there almost five years. I worked in customer service for personal credit cards and then moved to business credit cards. I learned about self directed work teams. Here, you could train to do quality monitors on peers in your team and give feedback. We also tracked attendance and purchased supplies. I was able to do some temporary assignments.

While working for AT&T Universal Card, I was an Assistant Trainer helping teach new hires. I taught job skills, answered questions, did quality monitors, and walked the floor helping with on the job training as they took their first calls. I also assisted in scheduling the center of over 2,000 employees to be re-badged and fingerprinted. This required me to schedule them within their current schedules. It was not a simple task and I was given 3 days to complete it…alone. I was able to get it done in 2 days!

AT&T sadly sold the company to CitiBank. Shortly after, they the Utah office was closed. This was my first experience with being laid off. It was hard, but I found there was always other work available.

United Parcel Services (UPS) was my next step. I worked there for seven years. I started with scheduling pickups for packages. Then I tracked packages. Later I moved to working in the billing department working with business accounts.

My last two years at UPS, I worked in the Quality Department as an Administrative Assistant. I was part of a team with five other people. We put together quality reports for seven different call centers. These included daily, weekly, monthly and yearly reports. Six of these call centers were vendors. They were not directly owned or operated by UPS, but were outsourced customer service centers trained to handle UPS customer calls. The quality reports had to be accurate as they used these reports to bid or negotiate what UPS would pay them for their services. I developed excellent written and verbal communication skills, a strong attention to detail, strong analytical skills, and strong team work ethics.

Next, was JetBlue Airways. I worked there over 13 years. This was by far the most fun corporate job I’ve had. I could travel and work from home! Now…some people may think a work at home job isn’t really a “job”, but let me assure you, it was a real job! I had a schedule when I had to be on the phones, I had to keep my work space quiet, we were monitored, and we had to stay on task and show we could handle being self directed.

I started in customer service doing reservations. Three years later, JetBlue switched their booking system. I was able to learn the new system quickly and found I could help teach others how to use this new, more complex, system. I moved into crew support where I could assist reservation agents with with this new system. I reported system issues, answered questions, took supervisor calls, and worked on special projects. As JetBlue developed partnerships with international airline companies I was able to back up their Interline Department and take many of those calls, even though I was not directly working in the department.

For the last two years, I worked in the Queues Crew department. Here I worked to resolve back end system issues making reservations ready for airport check in. I called customers to advise of schedule changes and make different flight plans if the schedule change didn’t work. I worked several other queues dealing with reservations to make sure the customers were taken care of.

Because of COVID, I opted to take early retirement to help my coworkers keep their jobs. I was already looking at moving in to a different position and had started school in July 2019 to move toward a technical job. I look forward for my next new adventure.

This is my blog about me, my work…and some other things! I hope you enjoy!!!

I started this blog to show my education, coding skills, and programming skills. Just a little information about me. I recently worked for JetBlue Airways. I had worked there over 13 years when COVID hit and the airline industry took a nose dive. In the most non literal referenced way.

JetBlue was an amazing company to work for. We could work from home, in our “pajamas!” I didn’t have to worry about a commute, road rage, spending money on gas and clothes, and I could spend more time with my family and kids. But with my husband starting a new job, the income wasn’t quite there.

In July of 2019, I decided to go back to school. I had a degree in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix, but I graduated back in 2004. My skills were rusty and I needed to get up to date with the latest technology. So, I enrolled in Davis Technical College to study Information Technology. I am still deciding whether to go in the Cybersecurity direction or Software Development.

Technology fascinates me and frustrates me at the same time. I know enough to get around and fix things. But the more I study, the more I realize there is so much to learn and know. I could spend the rest of my life learning everything I would like to know and do.

Whichever way my education goes, I know I will be able to put it to good use. Many companies need the skills I am learning and this will give me many more options to choose what work I want to do. I am excited for the future. Despite the hard times we seem to be going through right now.